Sourced from the original master tapes, housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, and strictly limited to 2,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD of Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live presents this collaborative tour de force in audiophile quality for the first time. Clear, detailed, and dynamic, the collectible reissue places each of the five fabled instrumentalists — Beck, Hammer, drummer Tony “Thunder” Smith, bassist Fernando Saunders, violinist Steve Kindler — in the positions that mirror where they played onstage during the 1976-77 tour.
Benefitting from the resultant three-dimensional soundstaging and black backgrounds, you’ll not only hear but nearly see Beck center right; Hammer center left; Kindler right; and Smith and Saunders anchoring the middle. The quiet vinyl surfaces further contribute to the sonic realism, immediacy, and energy. Paramount to Beck and Hammer, tonalities are natural and balanced. MoFi’s edition also restores and increases the emotionalism at hand. Concentrate on any passage, and you’ll sense the camaraderie, spirit, and joyfulness shared by the quintet — and communicated to the crowds. These guys love playing together, and it shows.
It’s one reason why Beck and company took great pains to ensure Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live wasn’t just another souvenir live recording. Along with producer/A&R icon Tom Werman, Beck auditioned tunes from multiple dates at Allen Toussaint’s New Orleans studio. They selected what they believed met their elevated expectations of standout musicality and fidelity. A majority of the album stems from a particularly exceptional concert in Reading, Pennsylvania. Hammer then got involved with the project by mixing the record.
Dovetailing with the peak of jazz fusion, Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live brings full circle a fruitful period that began with Beck’s acclaimed fourth studio LP, Wired, and continued with the extensive tour that inspired this album. The period witnessed Beck fly by the seat of his pants without a full-time band. Instead, he relied on solicitations from the day’s foremost musicians and risk-takers, creatives who were unafraid to challenge the status quo and come up with memorable fare on the spot.
That flair distinguishes the material here, all of which teems with scorching interplay, breakneck riffs, acrobatic rhythms, and one-of-a-kind synergy. Take the arresting introduction to “Freeway Jam,” where Beck’s guitar and Hammer’s synthesizers converse and recreate a cacophony of honking horns before segueing with the contributions of their mates to conjure an unforgettable highway ride. Consider the interstellar futurism of “Darkness/Earth in Search of the Sun,” radical reggae-laden revision of the Beatles’ “She’s a Woman,” feisty zip of “Scatterbrain,” and full-tilt sail of “Blue Wind.” All remarkable.
Beck and Hammer, Hammer and Beck — each pushes the other, and each responds in kind. Let's not forget the team of Saunders and Smith, which would go on to provide an unshakeable rhythm section for Lou Reed. If you’re a music lover who values musical wizardry and originality, not to mention sensational sonics, you’re not going to want to take this out of your disc spinner.
MoFi UltraDisc One-Step
Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the Ultra High-Quality Record (UHQR) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings, painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.
UltraDisc One-Step: The Future of Hi-Fi
Everything begins with the meticulous cutting of a set of lacquers for a strict number of records to be pressed. After being cleaned with a proprietary chemical, the lacquers are rinsed in de-ionized water and dipped in stannous chloride, enabling pure silver to adhere to the surface. This leaves a pristine, extremely intricate silver layer. The lacquer is then mounted onto a conductive copper bar and immersed into a tank with nickel anodes at 98 degrees. As electricity is applied to the silvered lacquer, the nickel begins to deposit onto the lacquer, while preserving the integrity of the grooves. The nickel-plated silvered lacquer is then placed into a high-speed rotary tank at 120 degrees and spun at 88RPM to ensure the even application of a nickel layer. Once the desired thickness of .012" is achieved, the disc is removed from the plating tank and the nickel convert is separated from the lacquer. At this point, the convert is formed into a single-use record stamper. This first-generation convert is used to make the pinnacle of audiophile vinyl that literally and figuratively brings listeners closer to the music.